Wednesday, February 11, 2015

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Monday, January 12, 2015

The slaughter of 12 people in or near the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is an attack on the freedom of the press, which is an attack on freedom. It is important that we don’t let it become anti-Islamic fodder for the right wing. It is critical that freedom-loving people stand in solidarity for a free press, for freedom of worship, and for some, freedom from worship.

I don’t think that our enemy is religion itself. The desire for faith is part of the human condition. Extremism can be found in politics, religion, or an economic system. We need not look far to see extremist Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Jews, and even Buddhists. It is generally agreed that Islamic extremists were responsible for the World Trade Center massacre, where thousands of lives were lost. However, Bush’s extremist political (and economic) views resulted in the loss of thousands of more innocent lives.

So I was left with the question, what to do on this saddest of evenings?

Well, weirdly enough, I went to church. Some folks have posted slogans against religion, comparing it to barbarism. I think extreme forms of any organized thought lead to barbarism. While Occupy brought extreme capitalism’s cruelty back into the limelight, think also of the horrors of extreme socialism. Marx was a genius, but Stalin’s and Mao’s forms of genocide must also be remembered.

I have found great comfort in various religious spaces over my lifetime, including Buddhist zendos and Episcopal and Unitarian churches. And yes, even a Catholic cathedral or two. But I would never suggest that anybody else should find comfort there.

My partner Paul says that he thinks church works best when there are just 12 people and they don’t need a building. We could have a long discussion about what defines a church or a faith community. But on this sad evening, I think it is the very human desire to connect our best selves to other people trying to do the same thing. And that’s what I found at church tonight, outside 88 Kearny Street, the offices of the French Consulate.

A group of several hundred people gathered outside the building’s entrance around 7 p.m. Soon enough the police decided to close the street and moved the barricades out of the way. Although they were gruff when moving the metal fences, some people politely said, “Thank you.” This wasn’t an angry protest so much as a vigil. Generally, it was quiet except for the requisite police helicopter overhead. Men and women cried and hugged each other. Occasionally a group broke into French song and sometimes clapped. And there were several shouts of “Je suis Charlie.”

The San Francisco fringe element was present—a man in Birkenstocks covered in a burka made from a rainbow flag. At the edges, it felt more like a Parisian café, people kissing each other on two cheeks, chatting in French, and of course, smoking. Towards the center, with the candles on the ground, the stillness was very moving in its pure quiet, in the power of mourning the tragedy together and recommitting ourselves to the concept of freedom.

In addition to candles, there were many signs with the “Je suis Charlie” sentiment and hundreds of pens and pencils held aloft. This was not organized religion, but it was faith in humanity made visible. So I will call it church.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

An exhibit of J. John Priola’s recent photographs just opened at the Paule Anglim Gallery. The show, “Nurture,” reveals the odd corners of the city where a tiny moment or strip of nature has been neglected or mistreated: a tree or bush growing out of control, or just the residue of nature lost.

I met Priola last year and visited him at his home and studio in Glen Park to talk about his personal history and his work. At first we chatted about his experiences up to the time he began receiving recognition for his work. The second part of the interview will cover thoughts on specific images and series.

Q: Did you get interested in photography growing up?

J. John Priola: I was always interested in photography. My mom was a photographer. Well, she wouldn’t call herself a photographer, but she always photographed. She got a little Brownie camera and went to New York in the 1940s, I think, and took all these pictures. She always took slides of the family and trips to the mountains, because we lived in Colorado. So I just picked up the camera.

Do you remember the first photograph that you called a photograph?

Yeah. It was a photograph of a pair of my sister’s shoes. They were platforms, but black and not so chunky. The heel was a little more tapered.

Did they appeal to you aesthetically?

Well, yeah. I think I did little still lives with them. There was the inner leaf of—it might have from a B-52s record. It was green and black leopard print paper—the sleeve that the album fit in. I used that as a background for the shoes. It was a little setup. I wish I had that picture. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just taking a picture.

So did it keep going in high school?

No. I wasn’t encouraged in high school. Although I did make clay pots. I went to an all-boys Jesuit high school.

Wasn’t creativity encouraged there? The Jesuits have a reputation for encouraging the intellect.

But not for encouraging creativity. The art classes were in a trailer in the parking lot.

Did you come out here for undergraduate school?

No. I wasn’t encouraged to be an artist by my parents either. I grew up on a farm. I remember my mom loading the dishwasher and saying, “You know, you can paint the paintings when you get your own house.” The only time my parents were impressed with my being an artist was when I got in a show in Germany and I was flown to Germany and put up in a hotel. “Oh. Okay, that’s something.”

Did you show inclinations towards being an artist?

Everything I did…I was making something. When I had to irrigate the crops, I would build little houses along what I called a river and there would be floods, because it would erode, and disasters would happen. I was always making up stories, always drawing, rearranging my room. All of the clichés.

Was it subtle how they discouraged you?

I got derailed. You asked about the school. They wanted practicality. So instead of majoring in art originally, I went in with an open idea. Maybe horticulture, because I always liked to grow plants. I didn’t like to farm, which is a very different thing than growing things. Farming is such a hard job. It’s such hard work because you’re dependent on the weather. And in Colorado, it always hailed, and you had to irrigate all summer long. So practicality was an important thing. I went to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, which is an agricultural college. I ended up taking courses to be an occupational therapist. But I got halfway through that and realized kinesiology, neurology, chemistry, no. But I liked psychology, the thinking and the feeling part.

So I transferred to Metropolitan State College in downtown Denver. I still kept doing my electives, and I took a photo class. I realized, “Oh man, this is it. This is making art.” Then I still couldn’t think that I wanted to be an artist, so I went into special education. Then I went into art therapy and said, “Fuck it. Just be an artist. It’s self-indulgent. Just do it.” So I finished my degree there. It took five years because I transferred.

Had your parents resigned themselves?

I think they were resigned.

And how did that twin with coming out?

I never thought about that until this very moment. But I bet part of my parents’ reservation was related to that, too. Maybe it’s just one and the same. I’ve never even separated them. It just all happened at the same time.

Tell me about some of your mentors.

The first photo teacher I had, Barbara Houghton—who I’m still in touch with—she was at Metropolitan State College. I think she’s in Kentucky now, teaching. She encouraged me to go to graduate school. There was also a woman named Jean Schiff. Jean was supportive, but in a whole opposite way. It was a drawing class. She would use my drawings as an example of what not to do. She would hang it up. “This is what you don’t do.”

How was that encouraging?

Well, it pissed me off. Like, “I know I can do it right.” I became insistent and committed that I was going to do it right. So I think between those two—good cop, bad cop—they showed me I could do it.

What subject matters were you exploring in school?

The easiest way to define it is when people think about photography, it’s this whole take and make—take photograph, make photograph. It went so quickly to making a photograph, never taking. I was never a street photographer. Never a documentarian. I would always set up pictures. I always had a hand in how things looked. And that’s changed lately, too. Because your hand doesn’t have to physically be there, but it’s how you construct things in a more open way.

So what were the early constructions?

When I was in college as an art major, I had a friend named Lily Rose, who was a transsexual, I believe. She was also a hairdresser and a DJ. There was this New Wave bar where she was a DJ. Wednesday nights were New Wave night at the Grove. It was so much fun to dress up, and I decided—just like Phil Oakey of the Human League—that I would wear high heels. So I started collecting spike heels from the thrift stores.

Heel, 1981
gelatin-silver print

That fit you?

Well, mostly. But then I just started collecting them because they looked good. I lived in this corner apartment that had lots of panes in the window, and I hung pairs of shoes in all the panes of the window. I had a huge collection of spiked heels. I started photographing those. I brought them to the steps of the Capitol Building. I brought them out to the farm and put them on the fence with the cows. My mom even helped. She held out a carrot to get the cow to come over near the spiked heels on the fence.

Cows, 1982
gelatin-silver print

Then I thought I wanted to photograph people. Again, the typical cliché thing is people don’t ever show up. They’re busy. And what are you stuck with? You and your stuff. So I started doing self-portraits. “Self-portrait” is an odd use of the term. The pictures weren’t really about me. At the time, I wasn’t thinking it was a picture about me. It was just what I had, what I could do. But they were so indicative of what I was going through. It was acting for the camera and, oh, it’s embarrassing. Although I love looking at it—but it’s embarrassing at the same time. Such a cliché. Gay men. I had this calendar of Marilyn Monroe, and I cut out the pictures and I put them in a frame and hung it on the wall, and I posed in front of it and took pictures of me.

Documentation of work for grad school application.

The same pose?

No, no. Different things. Acting out. But one of the shows that I had—Barbara had really encouraged me—my parents came to the show—I got rid of the Marilyn Monroe picture, but I had jewelry, gloves, and a mink collar. I did these shirtless, from mid-torso up with gloves, in color. I printed the picture small on it with white paper, but I would take a penlight flashlight and I would go around with color. It’s not digital. We’re way before digital. This is light.

Then I hung a grid of those up and I got a little glass shelf and I went through all the Vogue magazines and I tore out the scratch-and-sniff inserts. I had piles of scratch-and-sniff cards—so you were encouraged to sniff the perfume while you were looking at these pictures. I still think it’s a stroke of genius.

Scratch-n-sniff Gloves, 1981
c-print

Scratch-n-sniff Mink, 1981

Scratch-n-sniff Bracelet, 1981

Scratch-n-sniff Necklace, 1981

But were you clearly a male?

Clearly. It wasn’t drag. It was more gender-fuck if anything. But that was not a term for me.

Was your transgender friend an influence then?

She definitely was.

How did your parents react to these images? Did they say anything?

No, they said nothing. In fact, it was more like they ignored it. But at the show, Barb was saying, “He’s really good. He’s really talented. He’s very thoughtful. He really needs to go to graduate school. He needs to go on.” She was very encouraging. And they let me go to school.

So at the same time, they didn’t express negativity?

No. I never got thrown out of the house. None of that, no.

So then what did you do?

Applied to grad school. I applied to CalArts, San Francisco Art Institute, Tyler School of Art, and Chicago Art Institute. And I got into the two California schools, none of the East Coast schools. I went and visited CalArts.

Is that the one in Valencia?

Yes. I think that’s a really good school. I could feel the energy at the time. But it reminded me of the Fort Collins campus, where there are dorms and Led Zeppelin blaring out of the dorm windows and beer cans in the parking lot. This is too much like Fort Collins, Colorado. Bye. I don’t care how good the school is, I can’t live in this environment. And the San Francisco Art Institute was in the city. I had no idea how the city had open arms at the time. It was a weird time, the mid-1980s.

So you came here pretty much right away?

Right out of undergrad.

Your parents actually paid for it?

Yes. While my dad was struggling as a farmer, raising field corn and sweet corn, my mom figured out, “I’m starting a tree nursery so when these kids are in college, these little blue spruce seedlings I’m planting will be big landscape-sized trees and we’re going to make some money for the kids.” And they did. That’s how we all went to school. You got to give her credit.

Blue spruce trees?

Yeah. So when they’re mature, they’re worth hundreds of dollars. It was smart. Because in small family farming, you don’t make a lot of money.

So you came here in the mid-1980s, when AIDS had just hit. I wouldn’t say there was an antigay backlash here, but definitely there was a kind of hysteria. And people were getting sick. So that was a weird time to move to San Francisco.

It was a hard time. But—this sounds very self-centered—grad school is a world in and of itself.

Was it a two-year master’s degree?

Yes. But it took all my time. I put all my energy into it. So yes, there was this whole AIDS crisis happening. Friends of friends were dying. But it was out there, it wasn’t here. I was focusing on school. There was only one other gay student in my year.

In photography?

Photography was very disciplined. It wasn’t interdisciplinary. We weren’t encouraged to mix with other folks. I figured this out three semesters in. “Wait a second. There’s this whole other school. There’s George Kuchar, for God’s sake, working down the hall. Something’s got to give here.” I realized, oh, for your tutorial, if you just get a faculty from another department to agree, you can just do it. They’re not paying attention. So I got some visiting faculty in film and other departments to work with me, and that was a godsend. Because it was outside photography.

Because at the time, I did a series of Henry VIII and his six wives, all with my face. I did it with collage and drawing things. So it was funny. Because it’s so crudely cut out and crudely drawn, but they were Holbeinesque—these tiny little things.

Henry VIII, 1984
gelatin-silver print, collage, hand colored

Katherine Howard, 1984

Anne Bolin, 1984

Anne of Cleves, 1984

Catherine Parr, 1984

Bringing it around to this AIDS epidemic, the man who helped me—I would buy the frames in a thrift store. He made them into the right size frames. He died so fast of AIDS—and so did his partner.

Who was inspirational at the Art Institute?

Larry Sultan. Hank Wessel. Linda Connor, but for all the wrong reasons. She’s a good friend. But when she was my teacher, she raked me over the coals. But her criticism about how the work was going and it’s so much about the cliché—it was a revelation. I realized, “Yes, it is about the cliché! That’s what I’m interested in.” That’s the nucleus—she was thinking that was the problem, but to me that was the solution.

Did they give you philosophical feedback?

With Larry, all the time. In fact, I would often be listening and I’d think, “You’re full of shit, aren’t you?” But he was thinking and feeling.

So where did the work go, then, during those two years?

It stayed on the self-portrait, and it stayed on this gender thing. But not drag.

A farm boy from Colorado comes to San Francisco. Was that a sort of coming out, coming of age, finding out who you were as a gay person?

I didn’t come in contact with HIV. I could have so easily, but I did not. I get quiet when I think about that. Like, how did that work?

I’m curious about the self and the gender questioning as you’re coming of age in San Francisco. Are they connected?

You know, I’ve thought about this, but not a whole lot. Like, why was that the issue? Why was I so drawn to that, playing both roles?

Both roles?

Male and female. I was reading Jung. I think that gave me permission, in a way. “Yeah, keep thinking about that boy-girl shit. No problem. It’s in there.” But I think it has to do with growing up on a farm and what you’re supposed to do as a man and what you’re supposed to do as a woman. About growing up in such a traditional way.

untitled, 1982
c-print

When you don’t have a traditional mind.

And you’re surrounded by it. I’m trying not to be judgmental about it, but my mom followed her husband across the country, Illinois to Colorado. Didn’t know a soul. Lived across the driveway from her new husband’s parents, who spoke Italian in front of her—she doesn’t speak Italian. You don’t do that now. But then, everybody was like, “Here’s what you do. This is the deal. The man does this, the woman does this.” I grew up with that formative thing. But I didn’t have that mind.

What about your family? Did they buy into it?

I have a sister who lives in Santa Fe. She went to Johns Hopkins—as far as she could from Colorado. She got a BS degree there, got a killer job at GE here in San Francisco. Bought a house. Was on her way. But I think she met some pushback as a woman—you know, it was the 1980s. So she found out about this guru and moved to India…the aligning of mind, body and spirit…that freaked my parents out.

More than the gay thing, even?

Yes. Because the gay thing, they could ignore it. How, I don’t know. I mean, look at me. I had a spiked heel collection.

On their fence.

On their fucking fence. Anyway, somehow they ignored it and fixated on my sister moving to India. But it was a little weird, because she was told to get rid of all of her possessions. And instead of getting rid of them, she would write on the back of photographs and mail them as postcards. Like, she wouldn’t really get rid of it. She’d be like, “You throw it out.”

What was the work you were doing as you finished school? What were you looking at?

It’s the gender roles again, and taking the Carl Jung one step forward where he’s not just saying anima and animus, but we’re everything. We’re our own hero, our own heroine, our own saboteur, the whole thing. Instead of doing these black and white typical home photographs, where the woman is cooking at the stove and the man is yelling at the table, or they’re sitting in the little bench all happy, I am doing black and white constructive images I took of classical paintings—like the Tintoretto painting of Bacchus and Venus—and I have set up the scene. What I didn’t photograph, I would draw in. I hand colored, and I worked at a big scale. At that time, there was no Photoshop. It was all done with collage. I would do it on a small scale, rephotograph it with a poor 4x5 camera, and then recolor it. That’s what I was doing as I was leaving school.

Ariadne Bacchus and Venus, 1988
gelatin-silver print, hand colored

St. Katherine, 1988

Ruebens, 1988

What do you do with an MFA in photography?

I worked three jobs, and one of them was silk screening and another one was picture framing—which ended up being a 25-year gig. But that dovetailed with the photography, because it’s always allowed me to finish my work in the way I want to finish it.

And your work was often dependent on the frame?

Always. When I started to get noticed as an exhibiting artist here, I feel it was more like a sculpture. I didn’t ever sell just a print. It was framed. Always. That was kind of the deal.

Where did you work as a framer?

It’s called Spot Design. It still exists. Tamara Freedman still runs it, and she became like a third sister to me, working for her all these years. She’s an artist herself but didn’t pursue the exhibiting career, but became a picture framer extraordinaire.

When did people begin to notice you?

At that time, in the late 1980s, this was a different town and a much different art world. There was New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, Intersection for the Arts, SF Camerawork. All of these places were interested in emerging artists. You could send in an application, and if you were a good artist, you would get a show, a solo exhibition. My first show was at Intersection. Then I got into a group show at the Vorpal Gallery. They had a new director they hired that thought, “Let’s look at some of these new MFA graduates, and let’s have a show.” I think they never wanted to do that again. We were crazy.

After a show, you would be asked to donate a piece for an auction. A catalog would get made and make it around. Jeffrey Fraenkel saw an SF Camerawork catalog, and I was doing these round pictures, and he gave me a show.

It started out with truisms, kind of like Jenny Holzer, in a way. Life’s a bowl of cherries, the brass ring, the golden egg. So I would write that down, and I would visualize it first. And if it still made me feel good or—I don’t know what the feeling is—still felt that little burning, I would then set up the thing and photograph it. I think why they were still lives is because I never was a street photographer. I never wanted people to watch me photograph. I never wanted people to watch me at all.

I’d set the picture up, and I had a rule. It was three days or something. If I read the word and it still was interesting in three days, then I would do it.

Cherries, 1993
gelatin-silver print

Dice, 1993

Hole, 1993

So Fraenkel saw a piece in a catalog and gave you a show?

I was riding an elevator in 49 Geary. He rode up to his gallery up with me, and he knew who I was. I think it was because Tamara framed for Fraenkel. I knew who he was. And he said, “I really like your piece in the catalog.” “Oh, thank you very much. There’s more. Would you like to see them?” “Okay.” So I showed him.

Then he gave you an exhibition?

A summer exhibition, which, you know, that’s always the easy way to try somebody out. But people did pay attention. And I had three shows there over several years.

When did digital come in?

I totally ignored it until about seven years ago. My film stopped being made. It was a Polaroid positive and negative film, Type 55.

What did you do?

Tried to reinvent myself, tried to use a different medium. I just kicked and screamed. Then I realized, “I have to embrace this digital thing.” It’s not so bad now. It’s like oil painting and acrylic painting.

So how do you print the photographs?

Digitally. I do use the darkroom for black and white. Anything color is digital. If it’s black and white, it’s all analog. Still a wet process. Film, silver print. If it’s color, I don’t even use film. Just straight digital. A lot of artists still use color film, scan it, and then print it digitally. But I don’t want to attach myself to another film and then have it taken off the market again.

Do you print the digital prints yourself?

Yes. It’s not the fanciest printer. In fact, it’s outdated, but it works. By the time you buy and learn your piece of equipment, it’s obsolete. I also have the luxury of being able to print at school, but I hate it because there are students around.

It’s not private. How did you start teaching at the Art Institute?

You know, it was kind of funny. I think people go to graduate school because they want to be an artist or they want to teach. That’s why they get an MFA. But if you are going to teach, you make your career as a teacher. You need to put a ton of energy into getting that teaching job and doing it. Or you put a ton of energy into your art career, and then you’re asked to teach. Hank, my former instructor, asked me to teach a class. Frankly, it’s because there was a cancellation. Somebody bailed at the last minute. “Who are we going to get? Who do I know? Oh yeah, I’ll call him.” I got a call on a Thursday, “Class is starting next week.” That was 1996, I think.

So were you doing framing and teaching and making art?

I was. I never framed five days a week. I think I did it four, three, and then two, and then bye-bye.

Best Garden
Le Jardin Plume
It took us a while to find this paradise on the edge of Normandy. Never travel without an atlas. But the detour was worth it all. One of the most beautifully conceived modern gardens we’ve been to.
http://lejardinplume.com/

Best Restaurant Outside the US
La Pramil in Paris.
Ran into our friends Anne Fougeron and Mark English in Paris and found this gem without a reservation. My starter was white asparagus soup with foie gras ice cream. Last meal before the revolution!
http://www.pramil.fr/

Best House Museum
Just before lunch with we visited Le Corbusier’s apartment and studio in Paris with Sofie Nunberg, Anne, and Mark. Only open on Saturdays. Must see! http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr

Best Thai Restaurant
We ate at a great Thai restaurant called Au Petit Thai. They don't seem to have a website. Here is their info.
10 Rue du Roi de Sicile, 75004 Paris, France
+33 1 42 72 75 75

Best Private Club
OK, let’s be honest we don’t get invited to very many private clubs. But Two Brydges in London is basically a hang-out for folks in the performing arts. Great food, mismatched chairs, and adorable waiters. Thank you Paul Hughes!

Best Swimming Lake within a Short Driving Distance
Emerald Lake above Redwood City. It’s also private, but not fancy. You feel like you drove several hours to hang out in Andirondack chairs and jump off diving boards into cold green water. Perfect on a hot summer day.

Second Best Lake within a Short Driving Distance
Lake Anza in Tilden Park. It’s public and there is a nice sandy beach and a snack bar, but the water is a bit murkier…

We live on Lake Merritt but you can’t swim there.

Favorite Asian/Tribal Rug Store
The Claremont Rug Company has some of the most beautiful rugs in the Bay Area. But if you don’t have a big budget for antique rugs you might check in at Emmet Eiland and some of their new tribal rugs. Good prices, no pressure.

Best Chinese Food
Mission Chinese
Clean up a funky Chinese restaurant, turn off the lights, shrink and freshen up the menu, and Bob’s your uncle.
http://missionchinesefood.com/

Best New News Source
What happens when you bring a billionaire together with several very determined journalists? Well, I can only imagine the chaos, but most days you get something very interesting from The Intercept!
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/

Best Snow Globe
OK, I am not a big snow globe fan. But our pals Liz Ross and David Westby create something really different. Check them out at:
http://coolsnowglobes.com

Friday, December 26, 2014

Sunday, December 21, 2014, was last call for the Berkeley Art Museum. The fan-shaped concrete structure swept this boy off the street and held him for a long time. Mario Ciampi’s building from 1970 was full of surprises for a 12-year-old and still offers delight for the 56-year-old. Stairways, ramps, elevators, light, and concrete provided an excellent background for art that was confounding, challenging, and inspiring.

Bancroft Avenue elevation

Our parents were not especially adventuresome, but they did take us to New York, DC, and Montreal in 1967. The visual wonders of that trip have stayed with me forever. And a few years later, they took us to the new museum in Berkeley, where we saw Claes Oldenburg’s melting plugs and soft food. My parents were measured in their comments, not wanting to influence us one way or another. Having seen the Guggenheim’s fantastic spiral on our trip a few summers before prepared us for a building that was all about space and light. Some of the art we saw back east also got us ready to see everyday objects anew, but maybe didn’t prepare us for pop art that was so soft, so sensual, so real.

A few years later, in high school, I made dozens of visits with friends to the museum (it was free for students!) and spent a lot of time with the Hans Hofmann paintings, which were then in the top floor gallery. I hadn’t read about his ideas about push and pull and planes, but I was overwhelmed by the sharpness of his colors. One piece, just one shade of flesh pink, was easier to look at because his exploration was so much simpler for my developing aesthetic. It was here that I saw my first works by Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, and Sam Francis. All lessons in color, space, and meditation.

The Berkeley Art Museum took risks and filled in gaps. Some shows, like the Juan Gris exhibit, were traditional in their presentation but gave me a whole chapter beyond Picasso and Braque that I had missed. Other shows used the building’s architecture to great effect, like Robert Irwin’s light sculpture in 1979. More recently, in 2012, the Barry McGee show filled the center with graffitied vehicles and a clubhouse. Most of the visitors I observed were asking what all this junk was doing in a museum. For the Kurt Schwitters show, the museum reconstructed Merzbau, a fantastic environment that existed in the artist’s flat in Hanover.
http://designfaith.blogspot.com/2011/09/art-mind-kurt-schwitters-and-create-at.html

Pals Yosh Asato, David Baker, and Bruce Damonte

In the middle of the 1990 culture wars, Lawrence Rinder (then curator, now director) put on “In a Different Light.” It was not a show of gay artists exactly, but a show of gay sensibility organized around the themes of Void, Self, Drag, Other, Couple, Family, Orgy, World, and Utopia. Established artists and works from the collection were included along with emerging artists. It was a bold and brave step for a young curator.
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/InaDifferentLight

Perhaps my favorite show was the Joe Brainard retrospective in 2001. He was inspired by both Schwitters and Gris. And he was fearless. His small, careful collages were controlled yet often erotic, while some of his sculptures, most famously his Prell extravaganza, seemed to explode fully formed. He passed away from AIDS in 1994. He often gave his work away to friends. While he had a critical and mischievous eye, his work always seemed to hold a message of love.http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/brainardhttp://queersage.blogspot.com/2012/11/i-love-joe-brainard.html

I feel like this space was perfect for art spectacles. It was a gift that allowed you to see art and also see space, and sometimes the two seemed to merge. The university may keep the building, but given their prior clumsy attempts to mitigate its structural and water defects, their track record isn’t very good. I think that architect Mario Ciampi and founding director Peter Selz gave the university a building that was larger than its institution.